


Love Thine Enemy

by frogs_of_war



Series: Soldiers, Knights, Wizards, and Kings [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Family, Heirs, M/M, kingdom - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 21:57:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2708189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frogs_of_war/pseuds/frogs_of_war
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He makes me want him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Thine Enemy

Warm lips brush mine and then a persistent tongue. He has me against a wall down an empty corridor. I want to open my mouth and taste him, but I shouldn't give in. I close my eyes before he tries to meet them. I know what I’ll see. I’ll see my heart's desire, but that is something I will never achieve. He is beautiful. His eyes are dark and half lidded with passion perhaps or with the knowledge that he will win against me yet again.

I need to be stronger. His hand slides up my chest and my doublet might as well not exist. His lips move off mine to plant gentle kisses under my ear. He knows my weaknesses. He knows everyone's weaknesses and our blind spots and uses them against us. He sucks just hard enough not to leave a mark and licks that spot.

If I don’t give in he’ll mark me. He has before. I hate the stares and the questioning looks that result, but I hate more the jubilation of my father and his men. They pat my back and bring me flagons of mead bigger than my head and shout hooray that I, the sickly prince, could woo a woman to my bed.

"Think of me," he say as one of his hands strays lower, towards the place that never gets touched no matter how much I want it to be. I whimper. He chuckles and relaxes against me. His hip brushes my tender groin and I gasp. He uses that moment of weakness to invade my mouth.

I let him in and allow my tongue to be sucked into his mouth. Allow? Who am I fooling? Not even myself. I can't get enough of him, the way he tastes, the way he smells, the way his fingers glide across me and his body presses against me and his tongue within me. My arms are around him, one around his waist keeping his groin again mine and one holding his neck in a good position so I can deepen the kiss. He is the only one who wants me, the only one who touches me, the only one who does not treat me like a sculpture of spun sugar.

He is my enemy and I love him.

I hear a gasp from down the hall. I don’t need to open my eyes to know that it’s my mother, the queen. I don’t need to see her face to know that she gasps not because I, Henry Aemilius, prince and heir of Aberil, Gorland, and Thwaite, is being kissed by a man. If he were just any man she would drag me away from him as I have been dragged from every man who has sparked my interest in all my twenty-two years.

And I don’t need to see his face to know that he kissed me here so she would see us.

Feet pat against the carpet as my mother runs away. My mood is destroyed as he will destroy everything I love. I turn my head away and push him from me. He goes easily now that he’s won.

Wheels spin in my head. I turn to him, my eyes wide. "The child she carries. That babe is yours."

"Why say you that?" His voice is a caress against my sensitive skin, but he looks me over as if I were a talking dog. That expression fades as he licks his lips. Perhaps his lips are as numb as mine. Perhaps deep, relentless kisses are a foreign to him as they are to me.

Who am I fooling? I might as well believe he loves me.

I blink back my tears. He reaches out to wipe one away, but when I turn my head he contents himself with straighten out my appearance. The next time I see him, his black hair will be perfectly in place, his clothes will be precisely arranged, and his cheeks unflushed, but for now he tempts me by leaving himself beautifully tousled from our kisses, pretending he is mine.

I step away. I can’t think when he is so close. "She’s not worried about losing this baby. She’s not scared to love it. It’s been too long since she was willing to love one of us."

My mother has carried a child under her heart on nine other occasions. Of all of those only four of us survived long enough to draw breath. I have a single living sister, who dies slowly in her nursery, too tired now to play with her dolls. The doctors say she will not survive the winter. I was a lucky fluke: a son with a strong mind and the will to struggle for life.

I attribute this degradation to the last ten generations of kings who married their nieces. This royal line will die out even if I can find a woman so enraptured with being queen that she would be willing to share a bed with me. Even if I had the will to lay with a woman, I would be lucky if any of my children survived birth. I have no nieces, nor will I ever have any. My cousins are also my aunts. Those who survive childbirth bear children of feeble health and mind.

This baby might be the end to all this or it might be the end of peace in the kingdom or even the kingdom itself.

I look him over. He does not deny my accusation. "What, my prince, will you do about it?"

"You’re a smart man."

His fist clenches then he spreads his fingers and shakes his hand as he looks anywhere but me. He is trying not to preen. If he has one weakness, it is his intelligence.

"You are smart, smart enough to know that you could have everything."

"Everything." he raises one perfect eyebrow. "I already have everything."

I reach towards him for the first time. Normally he has to work on me for a while before I respond. He licks his lower lip and steps forward until his chest rests against my hand. His face is still, but not impassive. He is barely breathing. I have him curious and aroused. I want to keep him this way. "You hold the key to this country in your hands. You have subverted the military and control my father's councilors. If he were to raise a fist against you, he might be the one to fall."

His dark eyes seek mine and I do not turn away. I have his attention. I'm about to make the biggest gamble of my life. I know he won't appreciate it. "If the child is male and survives his birth, I will abdicate my position to him. I will follow you back to your castle and we will spend our days and nights together as an acknowledged couple."

My heart stops as I wait for him to tell me that I am a fool, that he would never want any such thing. He nods his head. "Go on."

"The subversion and control will not be seen as treason, but rather your efforts to allow us to be together."

"Fools for love?"

I nod with pretend ease. I have a knot in my throat that I need to cough out or swallow down, but I cannot let him see my nervousness.

He smiles, a genuine smile as far as I can tell. My heart nearly stops. He is so beautiful. I see the calculation in his eyes, the way out of the mess he made for himself, not that he sees it as a mess, but a way to father a king, to rip this kingdom from my family's grip, and to rule a country from the shadows, his favorite spot to be.

"And I would have to?" He reaches out and traces the collar of my doublet.

I shiver at his touch. "What we have been doing."

"Locking eyes across crowded rooms, private kisses, knowing glances…"

"Yes," I wet my lips. "But you must come to my bed, or me to yours."

"You to mine, surely," he says quickly, "for even a noble such as I will not survive the headsman's axe if I seduce the prince."

"You will be there tonight?" I can scarcely breathe. I have given my enemy nearly everything, by midnight it will be everything. But my heart leaps to see joy in his eyes as if these are the words he has been waiting for.

"I will be waiting." His voice caresses me.

I want to open myself to him, give myself to him, press him against the wall and have my way with him. But I’m still a prince to whom propriety come before pleasure. And I’ve one more thing to say to him before I fall under his sway. "But if the child dies or is female, I will keep the mantle I was born to."

If our affair comes out, his place in the order of things will change. Before the child is born he will be the Heir's Consort, a position almost as good as being in the royal family. If the child is a girl, he’ll lose his standing when I take a wife. But if a new prince is born, he’ll have the standing of a royal with the responsibilities. And if my father should die before my brother reaches majority, quite likely as my father has already lived longer than his father and grandfather, I will be brought in as regent with my consort at my side.

But this will only work as long as the king never finds out that the queen's babe is not his own.

War, chaos, death. Or life, hope, and love. Which will he chose?

A smile radiates from his face. "Then I best start by keeping your mother happy until her son is born." He leans forward and gives me a kiss like no other I've received. It is full of hope and promise and desire restrained. "Until tonight."

"Until tonight," I echo as I watch him saunter away.

I might be fooling myself, but there could perhaps be the slimmest possibility that he might just love me.

 


End file.
